Not just a river in Egypt…

It seems that there is an element of denial in the national psyche over here after South Africa lost in the semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy to England yesterday. Now, I don’t want to harp on about this, although the self-flagellation amongst the locals shows no sign of abating, so it’s obviously still relevant (and raw).

But there was this on the IOL news website:

Try, if you can, to ignore the formatting issues and look at those options. Because the blame game must be played.

Might I suggest a fifth option though (even though there’s blatantly not even room for that fourth one)?

How about “England“?

Maybe it wasn’t the best SA cricket performance ever, but then, maybe they weren’t actually allowed to play well. I mean, perish the thought that the opposition were actually better than them. We could never admit that though, could we?

Come to think of it, where is the story here? The Proteas lost to a better team, a team that is above them in the ICC rankings, a team that played better cricket than they did yesterday. ‘Choking’ (in this context, rather than a buxom celebrity cook context) is when you lose a game that you were expected to win – or you lose from a winning position. That didn’t happen here.

Oh – and Dale Steyn was injured, you say? – well, we’ll be sure to make a footnote in the history books for you.